Feb 21, 2008

There's a saying from where I'm from that translates loosely to: "After seeing the dogs testicles, of course you'll know it's a male."

Let me let that random set of crude words sink in.

If it’s still a bit what-the-fuckish it might be because of cultural barriers but it basically implies that anyone knows how to solve a problem after they’ve seen a few solutions offered up and I can sum up some of my experiences this week as such especially coming from the local head honcho fuckwad in charge here.

Here’s the situation:

A campaign was needed

A brief was kind of offered

Of course it had changes

Yes even up to the last minute (that’s when the best revisions come into play and make all the difference ie: put this in italics, change all the pieces and waste a pint of toner on something that will make no difference at the moment of selling a concept or a campaign)

The higher up in question has all the answers especially after he sees a layout and contra-DICKS himself constantly.

Then the Media director has great ideas to share with the creative group at around 12:30 AM the night before the presentation. Then traffic has all the right solutions the morning before the presentation and so on and so forth.

Well first off, anyone can look at a finished layout and suddenly know what’s right or wrong, but sadly they don’t have the same talent to convince a client to trust in us. And here lies my point. Apart from me not wanting to hear about bullshit revisions and “suggestions” at 2 AM or later, I really think it takes a special kind of balls to tell me that what me and my team did was wrong because you would have done it differently. First off, the only thing you would do better is get with your pals and have a nice jargon circle jerk of knowitallness and whatnot. You know the type of conversation, it’s the same tone and manner of jocks when they talk about the hoes they are to fuck or have fucked previously. Best part is that they don’t realize that just like jocks, us in the creative department constantly bash them for their incompetence and weak performance, even if I’m kind enough to offer up my opinion front and center from time to time. True I try to stay classy, but sometimes you just need to be a bit crude so you can at least get the bare minimum information to do your job semi-decently.

After thinking about this for a while, I noticed one small detail, there’s someone else who gets this type of flack constantly and that’s any type of politician. Think about it, everyone you know has the perfect solution to fix up the country and they know what to do because they watch CNN, read Nietzsche and Chomsky, and have an opinion. Don’t get me wrong; I have nothing against watching CNN, reading good literature that might offer some insight as to what goes on in life in general or anyone having an opinion. Also don’t think I don’t have strong feelings towards some incompetent moves made by government, you just need to take a stroll through Katrina affected states, take a swim in Coney Island or try to look at the Hollywood sign while in LA just to notice there’s something that can obviously be done better in their department.

But we don’t work in politics, this is advertising. Unlike politics, we often times don’t get the chance to even fuck up on our own because the client or the exec has an opinion to pretty much veto any strategic call you might have regarding their account. And just like politics everyone can have their own opinion, except that in this case you can’t just bypass it like some stupid opinionated psycho babble and must actually acquiesce to the golden nuggets offered by executives, media people, traffic people and any member of an ad agency that really don’t go past the ranking of ‘frustrated creatives’. Does this seem like a dick thing to say? Of course it does, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

To also clarify I’m not saying that any of these people can’t have a great idea. That’s not it at all and I’ve actually had to give thanks to execs for actually helping me tweak a headline to get approved by a client. What I am saying is that though an opinion can hold water, it just doesn’t mean two fucks to me when I’m drained, you’ve seen the ads twenty times and either didn’t include us in the initial creative process or weren’t included yourself for X or Y reason. So if you have an opinion, kindly jot it down and read it to me four days from now when I won't go postal on your ass.

To end this post, here’s fortune cookie #32:

On execs (but can apply to other people)

“Don’t tell me how to do my work, tell me how you’re going to sell it.”